Woman's legs are dangling out a car window during a summer road trip.
Welcome to our Gen Y money blog, where a recent grad chronicles her real-life journey to becoming a financially independent adult.
Summer brings a few of my favourite things: sunshine, festivals, and flex Friday work hours. Coincidentally, the combination of these three make the perfect recipe for another fun summer activity: Weekend getaways.
I look forward to getting away for a few weekends in the summer. Not only are these getaways a great way to recharge and temporarily alleviate my wanderlust, they're also a nice excuse to visit friends and family. With my parents living a few provinces over and my old university crew scattered around the world, I seize every opportunity I can to see them face-to-face.
Weekend getaways are incredibly cost-effective – in fact, most of them cost next to nothing.
Since I usually choose the destination based on couch-crashing availability, accommodations are often free. With lodging kindly taken care of by friends or family, all I have to cover is transportation, food and drink - and any other "fun" costs.
Depending on where I'm going, the total cost of a weekend getaway typically ranges between $100 and $400, most of which is eaten-up by getting there and back. The biggest financial drawback of a weekend getaway is the two to three day time restraint, which usually mandates the quickest form of transportation - as opposed to the cheapest .
Even when planning transportation to further destinations, planning the cost of a weekend getaway is manageable. I treat it like I treat anything I want to save up for: by sticking to my budget, planning ahead, and searching for deals.
Planning ahead is the cornerstone of any successful budget, and budgeting for a weekend getaway is no exception. The further in advance I plan, the more I can save up. By knowing which activities I'll be doing – shopping, dining out, going to concerts - I know roughly what my costs will be and can plan accordingly.
I've also reaped the benefits of booking flights, trains or buses far in advance. Finding deals requires a bit of digging on travel sites, but it's well worth it in the end – I was able to visit a friend in New York City recently thanks to a killer seat sale.
I paid $275 for my round-trip flight, a savings of $100 when compared to last-minute price for the same flight. Take it from me: Nothing last minute comes cheap, especially where airfare is concerned.
I've lined up three weekend getaways for this summer: to Montreal, a friend's cottage and to a music festival. As I make the arrangements, however, my inner penny-pincher has me feeling a bit anxious about spending my limited "fun" dollars.
Should I be dishing out a few hundred dollars for a couple of weekends, or should I be tossing any spare loonies toward my student debt? Would it be more rewarding to ditch the shorter getaways and instead put these funds toward a longer vacation?
But as I learned from succumbing to debt repayment fatigue last summer, staying on the long road towards debt freedom requires some controlled spending. It may seem like a bit of a backwards approach, but spending a little money on a weekend getaway actually helps me stick to my budget because it gives me something to look forward to.
Of course, thanks to Skype and FaceTime, I could share a glass of wine with a friend face-to-face sans the transportation costs, but it's just not the same.
Weekend getaways keep me sane. I don't mind spending a couple hundred bucks to get some quality face time with friends and family, so long as it helps me manage my finances in the long run.